


we push away what we can never understand

by talea



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Angst, Anxiety (kinda), Character Death, Dark, Depression (kinda), Gen, Hurt Thomas, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, Sad, Why do I do this, it hurts, seriously this made me cry while writing, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-25
Updated: 2017-01-25
Packaged: 2018-09-19 22:16:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9462698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talea/pseuds/talea
Summary: "Shh. Look. I'm here."Thomas fell more against him.There was silence again, then the Virginian asked: "What will I do when I lose you for real one day, Jemmy?""Don't think about it, Thommy. It's alright. You can stay. I'll keep the nightmares away, pinky promise."Thomas chuckled softly at the nickname and locked the smallest finger of his hand with James'.-This is sad. I'm serious. Trigger warning for a kinda-Character Death.





	

**Author's Note:**

> ugh.  
> it was a prompt from otpprompts.tumblr.com once but i changed it a lot, so yeah

_Thomas anxiously paces up and down the hallway._  
 _Everything is white and sterile, as far as he can see and his steps are the only thing that makes a sound at all._  
 _On the chairs at the side, which don't fit at all into the scenery at all with their bright, joyful colors, a part of the Madison family sits._  
 _James' parents and two of his sisters, sitting motionless, holding each other's hands and Thomas can see their lips moving, see them praying in silence for their son._  
James _. His precious, wonderful Jemmy._  
 _He has continuously been sick, always had a very weak immune system but in the last days, it just got worse. His best friend needed to be operated and Thomas feels his stomach flip again at the thought that James could be dead every second, the leading doctor has to make one mistake, one flinch of his hand, and James' life would be over._  
 _He is in surgery for nearly three hours now and no one tells Thomas if it goes fine. Were there any complications?_  
 _How should he go on when James left him?_  
 _He unconsciously walks faster and just in that moment, a door swings open._  
 _An assistant doctor with a clipboard in her hands comes out and doesn't even start to talk, just shakes her hand._  
 _For one second, it feels like the world stopped spinning like everything freezes in shock, horror._  
 _Or maybe it's just Thomas himself._  
 _Then the second passes. He hears a strangled noise from James mother, sees his sisters curling themselves up and starting to cry. His father just protectively wraps an arm around his family._  
 _The doctor says something they always say. "I'm very sorry for your loss." As if she's really sorry. She doesn't know anything._  
 _Thomas can hear himself denying it out loud, once, twice, but it feels like the voice isn't his own anymore._  
 _He can't breathe, the air just won't enter his lungs._  
 _His legs are shaky and he feels like passing out._  
 _He falls._  
  
Thomas awoke with a soft, broken yelp.  
He was panting, his sheets somewhere on the floor next to his bed, his clothes were wet with cold sweat and as he tried to sit up, his whole body felt tensed and his chest was tight.  
He tried to breathe deeper and focus on it.  
 _Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq. It's alright. James is fine._  
Another inhale.  
 _Cinq, quatre, trois deux, un. He's next door. You can stand up and go to him._  
Another exhale.  
When he rubbed his palms over his face with a groan, he felt the half-dry traces of tears on his face and sighed.  
He sat on the edge of the bed for some more time until his legs stopped shaking, then he stood up, left his own room and walked through the darkness of the small living room.  
As quiet as he could, he opened the door to the other bedroom.  
 _He would turn the light on for a few seconds, see that James was still there and go back to sleep. Easy._  
"Thomas?"  
 _Shit._  
His flatmate had a very light sleep and obviously awoke already.  
"Yeah?", he replied, hating how hoarse and tiny his voice sounded.  
"Com'here", he heard James saying and carefully made his way to the bed, where the other awaited him and softly grabbed his wrists with firm hands, pulling Thomas down onto the mattress.  
"Now talk about it", it wasn't a question, it was an order. "You're feeling bad since _weeks_. I notice when you sneak into my room in the middle night, you know."  
Thomas wanted to apologize. Wanted to say so many things. But everything that came out was a little, embarrassed: "Nightmares."  
"About?"  
"You." There was a moment of thick silence. "You die. Every time. You die and there's nothing I can do!" His voice got louder and broke into sobs in the end.  
"Shh. Look. I'm here." James closed his arms around Thomas, pulling him close and although he was the smaller one of the two, Thomas couldn't feel safer in the embrace.  
With a whimper, he eventually buried his head in the place where James' neck met his shoulder in a soft curve.  
"I know", he whispers against the soft skin there and was interrupted by a little hiccup, "It just seems to be so real. I feel so helpless about the situation."  
James didn't push. He let his fingers trail over Thomas' tensed shoulders, over his neck and massaged a spot right under the hairline.  
With a heavy sigh, Thomas fell more against him.  
There was silence again, then the Virginian asked: "What will I do when I lose you for real one day, Jemmy?"  
"Don't think about it, Thommy. It's alright. You can stay. I'll keep the nightmares away, pinky promise."  
Thomas chuckled softly at the nickname and locked the smallest finger of his hand with James'.  
  
-  
  
Again, Thomas woke from another dream. A bad one.  
They didn't stop and he noticed James concern when he crawled around the flat the time he was awake with dark bags under his eyes and the only thing keeping him alive being utterly black coffee.  
Suddenly, his stomach clenched and Thomas nearly jumped out of his bed, instantly nausea shot through his body but he couldn't care.  
He pushed open the door to the bathroom and it crashed into the wall, in the next second Thomas was sprawled over the toilet, the little amount of food he ate the last day now inside of it.  
He gagged at the taste and heard another door opening.  
Steps came closer and the next thing he could remember was James by his side, one warm on Thomas' back, the other holding loose hair strains out of his face.  
He clapped down the toilet seat and with James' help Thomas managed to sit down on it, burying his face in his hands.  
James' lead his wrists away and into his lap, where intertwined their fingers, still kneeling in front of Thomas.  
They stayed like that for some more minutes, then James left him to brush his teeth and sort out his thoughts.  
  
-  
  
"I don't understand why you stopped sleeping in my bed in first place."  
Thomas didn't answer, he was too exhausted and lulled deeply into James' scent. It calmed him down, made his breaths deeper and he nuzzled a bit closer into the embrace of his beloved.  
He heard James yawning and felt the fingertips of the other one stroking through his hair, painting little patterns onto his skull.  
Normally he didn't like people to touch his hair, but with James it was alright.  
He knew that the smaller one would never pull, never hurt him.  
"Try to sleep a bit, huh?", came James' smooth voice somewhere between the cotton-like bubble his world was at that moment and he felt how James pressed a feathery kiss onto his forehead.  
It made him smile.  
  
-  
  
While his waking days were still pure horror, his nights, right next to James, breathing him in, being close to the thing that was the dearest in his life, were calm, peaceful.  
He hoped the anxious feeling of sadness and grief, he couldn't quite place in the mess his waking days were consumed by would just pass if he waited.  
He waited a whole week but it didn't.  
It just stayed. Out of nowhere, he would start to cry.  
James would be by his side, shushing him, whispering sweet nothings until he calmed down and eventually passed out into welcoming darkness.  
  
-  
  
"Night, Jemmy", he mumbled before drifting off.  
Sleeping was like falling for a few seconds and then being awake again, normally feeling better than before.  
But when Thomas awoke the next day, he didn't feel better at all.  
"Jemmy?", he asked, still half asleep.  
He felt cold. Unbelievably cold and empty and so many emotions he couldn't even label were breaking into his bubble of peace all at once.  
"Jemmy?", he said once again, fear creeping into his voice.  
The bed was cold. Why was it so cold?  
He wanted to sit up but the pain that shot through his head let him sink down into the sheets again and groan out loud.  
/What was happening? Why wasn't James here?/  
He laid on his back, eyes closed, trying to find a conclusion until suddenly something hit him.  
A realization that made his heart ache.  
It felt like he was being stabbed. But not now.  
Like he had been stabbed a long time ago, but no one pulled out the knife that torn through his body, splitting him open.  
He froze. He couldn't breathe. His head was dizzy.  
Where was he? Who was he? What was happening?  
And then, like a pendulum that hit him and then lunged out, ready to crash into him again, everything came back.  
"No." His voice was high-pitched, panicking.  
   _James couldn't be gone, right?_  
 _Right?_  
"No, no, no, no, no, no", he chanted, like a mantra, like all of this was just a bad dream.  
His hands found the way into his hair, pulling harshly at the curls, sending more pain through his temple.  
James' scent was fading.  
The whole bed smelled like him a few minutes ago, so much that Thomas' couldn't think about anything else.  
But now it was fading.  
Fading so fast that it only was like a memory.  
"No!"  
Thomas flipped himself over, shaking, sobbing and grabbed a pillow, burying his face into it, trying to breathe in the fragrance once more.  
It was gone.  
He sat up as fast as possible, sprinting over to the wardrobe on the other side of the room.  
 _James clothes would still smell like him, right?_  
The closet was empty.  
"No", Thomas kept chanting, like he could chase the nightmare away like that.  
But he couldn't do that on his own. It was something Jemmy always did.  
He couldn't.  
Suddenly, another noise came to the many things he heard inside and outside.  
On the bedside table, his phone vibrated. It was too loud, he couldn't stand it.  
The next thing he knew was that he was stomping onto the device like an angry child until cracks were all over the surface until the color spalled and it showed it's dirty insides.  
The kept destroying until it stopped to make any noise and suddenly it was quiet.  
Thomas could only hear himself saying "no" again and again and again and he couldn't stand it either.  
He sunk down onto the floor, sobbing like a child, maybe screaming, he couldn't tell, it was all far away and faded into darkness.

**Author's Note:**

> dear thomas, how to say to you?  
> sometime last night, james breathed your name  
> and like a flame that flickers out too soon, he died  
> he's gone  
> he dedicated everyday to you  
> he changed your life, he made your life worthwhile  
> and when you smile  
> know: he wants you to live on  
> try to be so strong
> 
> -  
> i'm really sorry. kinda.  
> and i kinda want to continue this but it hurt so much.
> 
> have cookies, kiddos.


End file.
